Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/281

Rh We two were one while we did sympathize,

So could we not the simplest bargain drive;

And what avails it now that we are wise,

If absence doth this doubleness contrive? Eternity may not the chance repeat,

But I must tread my single way alone,

In sad remembrance that we once did meet,

And know that bliss irrevocably gone. The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,

For elegy has other subject none;

Each strain of music in my ears shall ring

Knell of departure from that other one. Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;

With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields;

Sorrow is dearer in such case to me

Than all the joys other occasion yields.

Is 't then too late the damage to repair?

Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft

The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,

But in my hands the wheat and kernel left. If I but love that virtue which he is,

Though it be scented in the morning air,

Still shall we be truest acquaintances,

Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers. Fair and flitting like a summer cloud;—there is always some vapor in the air, no matter how long the drought; there are even April showers. Surely from time to time, for its vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere.